Bought Affinity Photo last year, but took a long break from it because of the lack of a stabilizer at the time. Decided to go back to the program yesterday just to see if I could replicate my workflow from Photoshop, which I got decent results from. Still need to figure out some kinks in the system before I feel like my work in Affinity Photo is up to par with my Photoshop work. Might finish these two if I feel like it.

Empty space ...
... filled!
Last week we paid a visit to Shugborough, Staffordshire, an eighteenth century house and former home of photographer Patrick Lichfield, owned by the National Trust. The Room of Imaginary Landscapes has several enormous paintings fitted to the walls depicting, well, imaginary landscapes. The paintings are being taken down for conservation and cleaning; they are well over two hundred years old, after all. One has been removed from its mount and is resting on a stand while it waits to be taken away, and I took the opportunity of photographing it ... which was easier said than done! At about ten feet by eight, and with only a small space to work in, I had to take three photos and stitch them, then do my best to restore the result to a straight-sided rectangle with the Mesh Warp Tool.
Next I cleaned up the result by increasing the saturation and contrast and one or two little tweaks; if I had the patience, I might have done a lot more and fixed those water stains, for instance. Here's 'before' and 'after' ...
And all that remained was to distort the finished image to fit the gap in the frame, using the Move Tool.

Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are quickly becoming a realistic alternative to other software for many uses. They boast a great arsenal of features comparable to current industry-leading options, and I personally appreciate how they go out of their way to make the user's workflow more streamlined and simple without dumbing features down or restricting the potential for fine-tuning and more advanced control.
From a creative/artistic point of view, both software packages succeed at delivering a very solid and stable experience and the interface hardly ever gets in the way of creative flow. That said, I believe there are some minor improvements that could be made to the software in order to help streamline the workflow for artists. This thread serves as a sort of compendium of suggestions and feature requests relating to improving the workflow for artists. If anyone else has any other ideas that you believe belongs in this list, you can add it below.
NOTE: To my knowledge, this category of the forum deals only with the desktop software (Windows/Mac), but to avoid confusion, this thread is about the desktop versions only.
View Rotation Precision (Designer and Photo)
The view rotation feature is especially helpful for hand-drawn art, especially when using a drawing tablet that cannot be easily repositioned. It seems, however, that the canvas rotation feature is very limited, only offering a set rotation increment of X degrees left and right. Sometimes the jumps can be too big to find a good angle, and other times the user may want to precisely align the view to a line or a guide. The existing rotation controls can be mapped to hotkeys, but there isn't any default way of performing canvas rotation easily.
My suggestion would be to add a feature that uses one of the modifier keys to freely rotate the canvas to an arbitrary angle. The canvas could rotate about the center of the current view, and moving the mouse around that central point would control the rotation. This is how I've seen other programs handle canvas rotation, and it works beautifully. An option to non-destructively flip the canvas view vertically or horizontally would also be welcome.
Related link(s):
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/49658-view-rotate-is-hard-set/
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/43396-arbitrary-canvas-rotation-angle-without-trackpad/
Better Control of Variable Pressure (Designer)
The pressure graph can be used to control the thickness of strokes along their length, which is very useful for fine-tuning the look and feel of a drawing. However, there are some cases where the graph approach is awkward and cumbersome to use, especially when the user is trying to place a thick or thin segment at a very specific place. Since the graph is stretched from the beginning to the end of a stroke, simply moving points in a way that changes the total length of the stroke can ruin a carefully adjusted pressure graph.
As others have suggested, I believe variable stroke thickness should be handled on a per-node basis such that the user can (for example) roll the mouse wheel over a point to easily adjust the thickness of the stroke in that location. I don't know if that necessarily warrants an entirely new tool since it could probably be combined with the node tool, but I wouldn't be opposed to it. Another issue worth noting is that strokes drawn using the vector brush tool don't appear to allow variable pressure adjustment; the graph can be opened, but changing it doesn't seem to have any visible effects on the stroke.
Related link(s):
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/496-stroke-width/
Pixel Tool (Photo)
When using the pixel tool, if you click to place a single pixel, it generally doesn't do anything. The pixel tool seems to work only if the mouse is dragged. It would be much more comfortable to be able to simply click where you want to place a pixel and have it appear. As it stands, using the pixel tool for precision work feels finicky and inconsistent at best.
Resetting Sliders (Photo)
I noticed that in Affinity Photo's Develop persona, double-clicking on the sliders in the right toolbar resets them to their original values. This feature is incredibly convenient and sensible, but it seems to be the only place in the program where it works. Double-clicking on other sliders in other personas seems to do nothing. I don't know if they were originally intended to do this everywhere and a glitch broke the functionality, but I personally think it's a great feature and would love to see it expanded to the entire interface.
As I said above, if anyone has any other points, please feel free to share! Affinity's software has been enjoyable and rewarding so far, and it approaches the quality and caliber of Adobe's product line without forcing a subscription. I want to see the software improve and flourish, so keep up the good work!

I didn't find a setting for that, so I'd like to ask You to add it: I often need to see which exact brush I have currently selected. I have many of them, some similar by icon, but different in behaviour.

Hi everyone,
I have two problems and I can not find an answer anywhere.
1. How to crop / rid everything what is outside the artboard? Unfortunately clipping mask doesn't help.
I speak exactly about seamless pattern.
2. When I start painting, the brush reaction is delayed. The initial line appears after a while. Is there any way to correct this?
Thanks for the hint!

So, I just recently purchased Affinity Photo in hopes to have a software like photoshop to draw and paint on and the reviews looked pretty good. But, when I try to draw using the paint brush it pixelates first and then becomes a line and I have no idea what to do and there was no guide as to what can be done. I saw a video where it said the software needs to be set up in a certain way to draw and paint efficiently. If there is set ups to this please let me know. Also, there seems to be some color glitch where i select the color but still can't paint it on the canvas. Help Me.

Hi,
I have a problem with the brush cursor in Affinity on Mac: When I have brushes with some kind rotation function applied, like brush direction, the brush cursor does not respect this and stays the same all the time. Although I appreciate the refined brush cursor in some use cases, this is quite annoying, as this makes it hard to judge how the strokes will come out. Applications like Paintstorm do have a rotating brush cursor, and its very helpful. Either the brush cursor should rotate, or I need a neutral brush cursor like a crosshair. More options in the respect would be helpful.

Tell please, Do you plan to make such a convenient brush setting like in Photoshop. It is much more convenient than at the moment in Affinity Designer or affinity photo.I'm talking about the circle above the arrow in the picture below. very easy and convenient to change the brush - just press mouse 2. and in Affinity Designer i could not change roundness for brush, I thing option SHAPE in brush setting can set roundness but not for all brushes. I beg you to implement such an implementation is very convenient for drawing. Thank you for your attention and have a nice day.

Tell please, Do you plan to make such a convenient brush setting like in Photoshop. It is much more convenient than at the moment in Affinity Designer or affinity photo.I'm talking about the circle above the arrow in the picture below. very easy and convenient to change the brush - just press mouse 2. and in Affinity Designer i could not change roundness for brush, I thing option SHAPE in brush setting can set roundness but not for all brushes. I beg you to implement such an implementation is very convenient for drawing. Thank you for your attention and have a nice day.

Hey team, I've been trying out Affinity Photo as an replacement for Photoshop and I'm currently experiencing glitching of paint strokes when working on a 32-bit document. It seems to be affected by the brightness levels of the pixels in the document from what I can observe and sometimes certain areas are unpaintable at all. Restarting Affinity may resolve the issue for a few strokes but it will occur again.
Below are two images, hopefully the issue is obvious enough!
Edit: Tried 16-bit and the same issue occurs. Brush strokes will overlap (the brighter strokes cannot be painted over). See 3rd image for the result.
Edit 3: It's happening it 8-bit too! This is getting really weird.
Edit 4: Seems like the issue can be resolved by copying the content from the exr/hdr/affinity document to an new one. (The 2nd image was an 32 bit file from Affinity Photo for Mac). Brush strokes are overlapping and I'm able to paint over the image as expected. (4th image, showing that brush strokes overlap predictably)

This is, probably, too much to ask for a program, that's 90% there. Painting is vastly different from photo manipulation. Combining both in one program is great, but while one paints, he doesn't usually need other non-related features and tools, But he needs all of the necessary tools right there, literally at the left finger tip. With this in mind, it'd be good to have a "painting persona" added to the top personas.
Things nice to have in the toolbox (left menu):
Marquee tool to move, re-size, rotate distort (drag corner anchors) Selection tools (I know, we have a whole sophisticated selection persona, but there needs to be some way to select a part of an image right there): rectangle, lasso quick selection brush magic wand
Paint brushes: opaque (oil) transparent (watercolor)
Retouch brushes dodge burn sponge (saturate/desaturate) blur sharpen
Liquify brush (could be few) Eraser (+ erase to history) Show/hide mixing palette Show/hide reference image (see how ArtRage does it) Fav. brushes (your saved custom brushes). Choosing one automatically switch to the brush type it was assigned to (dodge for example). More - expose other custom brushes by moving all tools up.
Bottom controls (sliders and switches). They have to be available without extra clicking and going to a submenus. This is like asking an artist to go to another room to pick another brush from the box every time he needs one. There is enough room horizontally.
Brush size Brush opacity Flow Brush hardness Wet paint on/off Finger rejection on/off (optional, can be part of preferences) Show 100% Hide/show controls (full screen)
This would make your app a dream for artists too, not just photographers!

Hi there,
I'd love to see symmetrical drawing added to Affinity Photo. Minimally, across the vertical centerline, although it would be nice to be able to do symmetrical painting with any number of strokes evenly distributed.
More than anything, though, when creating character sheets, it's nice to be able to quickly lay out symmetrical detail live, rather than mirroring after I draw for a while.
Thanks,
Alec

Using Photo trial 1.6.4.104 . Edit : In Windows 7, Wacom Intuos Pro 4 XL.
The problem : The current interactive color picker tool, that is, switching to pick color with alt key, or my case, side pen button configured as alt key, while you are with the brush tool, to very quick pick a color between 2 big chunks of painted color, so to paint with an intermediate color. This is very very fast and common technique for color blending while painting. There are many other painting, illustration or texture making techniques that also need fast color picking. To all of those, this problem applies. The problem resides in several issues that I believe get solved with an easy solution. The magnifier lens that show up once you click on a canvas point (I am clicking, not dragging) to let you better pick the pixel you want is very good for photography but not important for painting. And I believe it is causing to lag the action, has a sort of small time there very noticeable when using very often, very fast (a need for painting-blending, also called glazing technique). Sometimes, if fast enough wont pick the color, at times. It's a bit hard to work so when painting (loosing focus, slowing down, etc). This all by setting the alt key in a wacom pen side button. One very big problem is that very often, a fast click wont pick the color. Probably because it is expecting a drag, not a click like in other software apps.
A suggested possible solution : Could it be possible / easy (I have no idea) to add a "not to be default" option so that users can disable the magnifier / dragging ? The eyedropper tool works a bit more like this, although if dragging or keeping it pressed, the magnifier ends up showing up, but you need to drag more/less dry click for it to happen. Well, in any case, not to replicate with the interactive picker the blue marquee around the object that the eyedropper tool forces, that would be bad while painting. Having an "alt + pen click" (no drag, no magnifier) color selection on canvas like in any other 2D application. With not even the magnifier on it. As I believe the estimation/input about if is there dragging or not, or actually displaying the lens, is adding some delay there, and causing some times not to even pick the color. Or never pick it, if fast enough.
There even might be photographers wishing to have at least the option to deactivate the lens, so to have a blazing fast color picker, so, I guess is a good thing to add for any group of people, always as an option that does not need to be default after install.
This would be huge for me (and I suppose, for any other person painting, making comics, illustration, texturing, etc, etc) , for my workflow. (a reason to purchase, indeed)
Too lengthy version here, but I realized I hadn't done a formal feature request, and I was talking about two requests in same post (about digital painting requests in general), mixed with another matters, and it was too long, in any case.

Playing with the brush engine in Photo & Designer and found that Hue / Saturation / Luminance Jitter work differently from other apps…
In Affinity the jitter is applied per dab.
Compare with Photoshop (and others?) where the jitter is applied per stroke.
In my limited experience per stroke is more useful in digital painting for creating subtle variation between painted strokes.
Could Affinity have the option to choose how the jitter is applied?
Thanks for your consideration.

As a digital artist and Mattepainter the painting component in any software is extremely important. Now with many levels of sensitivity available on the computer and iPad its become something we all lean very heavily on. AP’s dynamics for the pen has an issues I think needs immediate attention. When painting in broad or fine strokes AP struggles with the sensitivity when the pen hits the screen. Random stamps of the texture occasionally are splattered on the page even on the lightest touch of the pen. This becomes extremely annoying by having to undo the last stroke. Painting has become a less free and easy thing to do while im constantly watching out for this. I’ve tried playing with the setting but unfortunately it makes no difference.
Ive attached a video where this is demonstrated by light taps on the screen. This is about as hard as I usually paint when moving through a piece I’m working on. So to paint a stroke with the flick of the brush after this contact it randomly creates this frustrating splatter.
As you’ll see in the video I show this effect in AP and then move to Procreate, where it doesn’t happen at all.
I want to remain painting in AP and keep it as my preferred choice of software. Both apps are great for painting but this is sad AP is not up to Procreate’s pen sensitivity level.
Im curious to know if anyone else has experienced this and find it to be a problem?

Is there a way to hide the outlined brush tip? I guess some people might like it, but for me it is totally disturbing, especially with complex brushes. The outline hides faint brushstrokes and makes it very hard to judge if they are correct, especially with large brushes, low opacity and short strokes. I prefer just a dot, or nothing, as I see the tip of the Wacom pen anyway.

Hey folks,
I am currently testing AP for digital painting and illustration. I like a lot, but the outlined brush tips (desktop version) can be extremely disturbing:
- they lag behind
- some complex brushtips with large sizes hide subtle paintstrokes, so it is hard to see what I am painting under the cursor
I didn't find a way to hide the brushtip completely. Is there one?
If not please consider adding a user preference for that.
On the plus side, I like the feature parity of desktop and ios versions. Being able to use the same brushes is also a huge advantage.
Regards, Marin

There is this technique I want to replicate in Affinity Photo that can be done in Photoshop, but I can't get it to work in AP (see video link below). What I basically want to do is select all the pixels of an image from all the visible layers by using the Channels window, create a new layer, and then finally fill the entire selection with a single colour that has translated the shades of the selection into transparent pixels (i.e. pure white is 100% transparency, black is 0% transparency, and grey is everything in-between those extremes).
Video link in question: https://youtu.be/WZOJqbSBPxI?t=7m1s

Hey guys!
Here is my first post here, and this is my video about painting the Monster in Affinity Photo. Hope you like it!
Feel free to share and subscribe to my YouTube channel!
Best regards,
Andrew Bzh.

Screech
Just sharing the latest crazy drawing! based on Inktober:09
All vector reconstruction of sketch started in Sketchbook Pro 8.5 last year
Completed in AD using just vectors
Size = 200 x 200 mm (300dpi)